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Thursday, January 5, 2017

#1 - The Children of Men - P. D. James

Title:  The Children of Men
Author:  P. D. James
Publisher/Date:  Recorded Books, LLC – 1993
IBSN:  1-4193-2343-1
Narrated by:  John Franklyn Robbins
CDs/Hours:  9/10.5
Dates listened to:  12/25/16 – 1/4/17

“PD James, best-selling author of the Adam Dalgliesh mystery series, has proven herself adept at writing novels that are suspenseful without being gratuitously violent, complex with being complicated.  Her characters are convincing and their plights believable, which makes The Children of Men all the more compelling.

“The human race faces extinction.  It is annihilation brought not by disease or nuclear war, not by crashing meteorites or colliding stars.  Men and women have ceased simply to procreate.  In 1994, sperm counts hit zero, pediatrics wards were rapidly and permanently depleted.  Overnight, it seemed, the human race had lost its power to breed.

“The last generation of children to offer mankind a chance was born in 1995 – the Omegas.  Coddled and overprotected, the Omega were the world’s last, great hope.  When they, too, reached sexual maturity unable to breed, everyone realized homo-sapiens had become a doomed commodity.
“Now 25 years later, a pervasive lethargy blankets the world.  Pornography has been legalized.  Massive numbers of people have fled back to the cities, fearful of encroaching nature.  Ritualistic suicides are sanctioned by the government as a means of ridding countries of their surplus elderly.  Anarchy reigns in the prisons, immigrants are enslaved, renegade Omegas terrorize the land.”

This book is set in 2021 Great Britain and we find Theo approached by Juliann to join a resistance group and approach the hierarchy of the land in an attempt to staunch the anarchy.  Children of Men is also a British movie made in 2006 and for which I’m on the waiting list at the public library and am 50th in line!

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